


Hide Too Well Away

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-22
Updated: 2007-05-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam, Dean, and John go into the woods on what starts as a simple salt-and-burn job. There are things they aren't telling each other. And what they do say only makes things worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hide Too Well Away

**Author's Note:**

> Timeframe: the summer before Sam leaves for Stanford  
> Written for the [](http://family-secret.livejournal.com/profile)[**family_secret**](http://family-secret.livejournal.com/) challenge, prompt 18: _“We dance round in a ring and suppose, While the secret sits in the middle and knows” - Robert Frost quotes (American poet, 1874-1963)_.
> 
> a/n: Weapons knowledge courtesy of [](http://hossgal.livejournal.com/profile)[**hossgal**](http://hossgal.livejournal.com/) and [](http://erinrua.livejournal.com/profile)[**erinrua**](http://erinrua.livejournal.com/) , and otherwise Wikipedia; the errors are all mine and I apologize in advance. Thank yous to [](http://batyatoon.livejournal.com/profile)[**batyatoon**](http://batyatoon.livejournal.com/) and [](http://innie-darling.livejournal.com/profile)[**innie_darling**](http://innie-darling.livejournal.com/) , and especially to [](http://iamstealthyone.livejournal.com/profile)[**iamstealthyone**](http://iamstealthyone.livejournal.com/) for her insightful and super beta read. Title is from [Robert Frost](http://www.bartelby.com/117/21.html). In my own fanon, this is a follow-up to [The Farther You Run](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/49486.html) but you absolutely don't have to have read that to read this.

There were times when nothing John had ever hunted was as daunting as trying to figure out his boys.

He awoke the morning of the hunt five minutes before his alarm went off, a potent internal clock. Before he'd started hunting, he'd had to be prodded and nudged awake like a hibernating bear. Mary used to hold a hot mug of coffee beneath his nose until he opened his eyes.

The mental thud as he shut off that road of memory was almost audible in the still, warm predawn room. A heat wave had settled into the Ohio valley region, digging its claws in, and it didn't look like it would leave anytime soon. So even now, before sunrise, as gray light crept in through the shades, it was already humid. Through the wall, in the kitchen, he heard someone moving around.

John rubbed his hand over his face and rolled out of bed. From long habit, he pulled the faded, pilled, green terrycloth robe on over his skivvies before stumbling out of his room and down the hall. He figured it was Dean in the kitchen. Dean was like John when he first woke up. Took him a few moments to get coherent, but he did it fast and once he was up, he was up.

But when John fumbled into the kitchen, he found Sam boiling water, taking out mugs, setting the can of instant coffee down on the counter with a tap

While Sam woke like clockwork every morning for school, or school trips, or one of his many part-time jobs, John couldn't remember the last time Sam had gotten up this early without protest for a hunt, for anything where they had something unspeakable to go burn, shoot, or slay.

Sam took out a frying pan and then turned to the fridge to find the eggs, and John wondered when Sam had gotten so tall, when he'd stopped moving so clumsily. A year ago, Sam with a frying pan in one hand and the egg carton in the other would have been a disaster waiting to happen, and John could have bet money there'd be egg on the floor instead of in their bellies.

"Morning." John cleared his throat.

Sam startled. The carton of eggs dipped dangerously towards the counter, but he recovered, gently putting them down.

"Hey." Sam slid a knife's worth of butter into the pan and the butter sizzled. After a moment, Sam neatly cracked open two eggs, one in each hand, and chucked the shells into the garbage.

"You're up early." John sat at the table and drew one of the notebooks towards him, one of many scattered among the papers they'd left there the night before.

"You said dawn."

"So I did."

Sam made the eggs over easy, the way John liked them, sliding the eggs onto a plate and putting them down on the table.

John reached for the salt, but didn't smile. He couldn't. "Better go wake Dean," he said between forkfuls. "Saddle up. I'll take care of the coffee."

Sam shrugged and wandered out of the kitchen.

After a moment, John distantly heard Dean's confused mutterings, and Sam's voice answering.

The predawn changed to dawn, the air growing warmer as the light through the kitchen window grew brighter. He shook off the knot of unease that had formed in his gut. It was unease that had nothing to do with the impending hunt, which he figured for a simple salt-and-burn, once they located the remains.

Two months, John calculated. However he sliced up the time -- two months, eight weeks, or fifty-six days, give or take -- that's all he had left to teach Sam, to make sure he knew the rituals, how to lay protective salt lines, what to do if a wraith attacked, how to consecrate iron buckshot, a hundred other things he'd forgotten, replaced by a hundred other things he just now remembered.

Sam was a mystery to him, always had been. Mary's broad smile, wry humor, and gift of listening. Her rebellious streak too. But the temper wasn't from her, and it seemed at times like Sam was stubborn almost for its own sake. As if he stopped being stubborn he'd go under, let the water close over his head.

Sometimes Sam wasn't just a mystery, but a mirror.

John was fairly sure his youngest thought that his old man didn't get him at all, that all of his secrets were safe. But John had learned early on that part of being a good hunter was observation, looking for the small tells. But it had taken a blazing neon sign, a scrap of torn paper John had found in a wastebasket back months ago, with the words _DO NOT STAPLE -- Basic Information Form Freshman 2002_ at the top to wake him up.

It was possible Sam hadn't gone through with applying. But it was more likely that he had, and John had no doubt that Sam had gotten in. Hell, the schools were probably throwing money at his head, begging him to choose them.

Old regrets tugged at him, at things that should have been, and things that could never be.

He put his plate in the sink and washed it, letting the cool water run over his hands. He should have nipped this in the bud already.

Dean would find out eventually. If anyone could talk Sam out of going, it would be Dean.

Turning off the water, wiping his hands on a paper towel, John stood at the kitchen table, hands shoved into the pockets of his ratty bathrobe, staring down at the pages of research without really seeing the words or images. Something in the back of his brain muttered that he was afraid. Something farther back than that whispered that most of all, he was hurt.

* * *

Somewhere in the woods lay the remains of Elizabeth Henner, who had gone missing thirty years ago. Most likely it was her ghost that had haunted the woods ever since. Hikers had been going missing too regularly, all men between the ages of 35-50, and well, that was a pattern, and in Dean's experience that meant either a serial killer or a ghost. Monsters had patterns too, but not the way ghosts did. Ghosts were OCD all the way -- they got fixated.

Of course the living acted that way sometimes too.

"We follow the map, son."

"Yeah." Sam frowned and toed a fallen branch. "But that doesn't look like a trail to me."

"I suppose you know better?" Dad folded his arms. "I've been hiking around in the woods since before you were born."

Dean adjusted the strap of the bag that held his shotgun and a couple of sandwiches and sent a glare that went right over Sam's head; kid was too busy glaring at Dad.

Jesus. Sometimes he thought Sam had a death wish.

"Look. That way's all overgrown, but this way --" Sam pointed. "Is clear. It looks like a trail."

Dean sat down on a thick tree root. "Hey, anyone hungry?" Dean said loudly, opening his bag. "I say we break early for lunch." He pulled out a sandwich, tore off a big chunk of it and it his mouth. The sandwich tasted pretty good because Dean had made it himself, just the right amount of spicy mustard. "Who brought the beer?"

But Dad's voice was a chill breeze in the hot morning. "We're going that way."

Discussion over.

Dad strode on ahead double-time.

"I swear, if he makes us do cadences I'm out of here," Sam muttered, shoulders hunched, as he and Dean kept on walking, matching each other's pace.

"Don't give him any ideas." Dean finished off the sandwich and wiped his fingers on his jeans. A trickle of sweat tickled the back of his neck. It was going to be a long, hot, grouchy day. "Any ideas yet where the remains might be?"

Sam shook his head. "I brought a bunch of printouts with me, figured when he--" Sam put a slight emphasis on the word, bitter only to Dean who had a sharp radar for it "--decides to stop to rest, I'll go over them again. I've got the notes from the interviews we did with her aunt."

Everyone else the girl knew -- her boyfriend, her parents -- was dead. The boyfriend had fulfilled his reputation by dying in a car wreck in a fast sports car twenty years ago. The father had died of a heart attack ten years ago, the mother soon after of pneumonia.

Elizabeth Henner had taken her family with her, slowly over time; the aunt had said the father's health had declined after her disappearance.

Sam ducked a low-hanging branch. "We aren't even sure she's dead."

"It's a good bet, though, given all the deaths, same M.O. each time."

All the hikers' bodies had been found in the bottom of the ravine that ran across the eastern end of the woods, deaths going back decades. According to the guidebook, the parks service had put up a picturesque wooden fence and warning signs about ten years back. But it hadn't made any difference.

Technically, the woods were now closed to hikers, but people went in anyway. Stupid kids looking for a thrill came through fine, but seasoned hikers, competent outdoor types like one Harold W. Jones, found two weeks ago dead of a head injury, were goners.

"You think she's in the ravine?"

"Yeah. So does he." Dean nodded ahead at Dad, watching the shadows that passed barely visible over his father's black t-shirt. They'd all left their jackets back in the truck, despite Dad's philosophy that you never knew when conditions could change, so be prepared. It was too fucking hot for anyone's philosophy.

Sam snorted. "You'd think he could maybe _tell_ us that. And let us look at the map for more than fifteen seconds."

"He doesn't need to," Dean said, more terse than he'd meant to be. "He knows we're thinking the same thing he is."

"Maybe." Sam was tight-lipped.

Yeah. Long, hot, grouchy, day.

At least Sam was there, though. At least it was the three of them, on a hunt together.

Because come September, that was all over.

Dean inhaled the muddy, clean, warm smell of the woods, shrugging against the knot that formed in his stomach every time he thought about it. Sooner or later, Dad was going to find out, probably when Sam was already gone.

Back in the winter, Dean had spotted the college brochure in Sam's notebook, and he'd asked him about it, and Sam had told him. But there were times when Dean wondered if Sam had planned to tell him, or if Dean would have just woken up one morning to find Sam's bed empty, his duffel bags gone, and a note pinned to the pillow.

He glanced over at his brother. The sweat had darkened the hair around his face and there was a pimple healing on his chin. He looked the way Sam had looked for years now -- freakishly tall, all legs and arms -- but he wasn't moving the same old way anymore. He moved confidently, never stumbling.

A lot like Dad.

* * *

Underneath his mattress, Sam had $367 tucked away, money earned from odd jobs and his gig that summer at an ice cream parlor. The place was local, not a chain, and had been open for business since the 1930s. Dean endlessly mocked the paper hat and striped shirt Sam had to wear, but he never turned down the free ice cream that was a benefit of being the sibling of an employee.

Dad knew about the job, but he'd never been down to the shop to visit or sample one of the twenty-seven ice cream flavors. He certainly didn't know about Sam's stash, although Sam wondered what his father thought Sam did with the money, since he hadn't handed it over for food, rent, or ammo.

He thought about what it would be like to be in the same place for four whole years. Sometimes it seemed like their whole lives had been in motion, all about getting from to point A to point B, with point B never fixed -- a succession of rest stops, motels, shabby apartments, small towns, too many schools to count. Each time with something unspeakable waiting for them. Things with fangs, things with no corporeal form, things that smelled like rotting corpses.

Dad paused, rolling his shoulders under the weight of his backpack and wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm. Then he turned with inexorable precision and headed south, where there was a break in the undergrowth.

Sam waited a moment before following, craning his head back to peer through the leaves, which looked like stained glass with the sun shining through them. The heat was a physical weight against his face. He took a few swallows from his canteen as Dean stepped up beside him, a bright yellow package of peanut M&M's in his hand.

"I swear to God, Dean, we're going to end up retracing this entire hike. Why doesn't he..."

Dean tossed a handful of candy into his mouth. "Sam, you bring that map up one more time and I'm going Blair Witch on your ass. The man knows what he's doing."

Sam bit back what he wanted to say, which was to ask Dean yet again why he kept making excuses for Dad. For one thing, he already knew the answer.

Sam watched his father and tried to see him the way Dean did: the broad set of his Dad's shoulders, the confident way he walked, as if the low-hanging branches and the undergrowth should get out of his way or he'd burn them to the ground. The way he looked around at intervals, not nervously, but measuring, assessing the woods and how much of a threat they might be.

He also noticed, when they reached a boggy patch near a stream, how Dad toed the ground with his hiking boots, testing it, and glanced behind him to make sure Sam was following right behind him, and wasn't too far off the trail he was blazing. Over in the shadows where the mud was thicker, midges filled the air and the ground didn't look sure.

He didn't dare ask to see the map, but Sam tried to remember the quick look he'd had of it that morning. The official park trail ran parallel to the bog, and seemed laid out more for its scenic qualities than for getting somewhere in a hurry. By following this route instead, Dad was shaving probably an hour off their hiking time.

Okay, so maybe Dad was right.

In the corner of his eye, something moved off in the trees, a flicker of sunlight and shadow that seemed to have form. But when Sam stopped and looked hard, there was nothing there but trees, stretching away farther than he could see.

"Hey -- " Dean smacked Sam's arm. "Keep it movin'."

Which was Deanspeak for _I told you so_.

Sam watched as Dean strode ahead, tossing back another handful of M&M's like he didn't have a bag full of ammo over his shoulder, motions coiled and controlled. Dean looked most like Dad when he moved.

Being in the same place for four years sounded so solid and safe and normal. But as Sam followed Dean through the woods, as he had all his life, the tiny stir of anxiety he felt as he thought of September reduced _solid,_ _safe_ , and _normal_ to mere words.

* * *

Just past eleven thirty, and the sun was high, but the leaf canopy offered plenty of cover. It was hot enough that he started to worry the boys might get heat stroke -- both Sam and Dean were sweating heavily. His own T-shirt was soaked with sweat as well.

It was when they stopped to rest that he felt it, a prickle at the back of his neck, under the skin of his arms. This wasn't something he'd gotten from hunting, and it wasn't just for ghosts -- he'd first felt it while gripping an M-14 in humid heat that made the Ohio summer seem temperate by comparison. John didn't have much faith in sixth senses, but that tingle at the back of his neck had never been wrong.

The closer they got to the ravine, the worse it got.

The ghost of Elizabeth Henner was out there, watching them.

The boys each took several discreet swallows of water from their canteens, as he'd taught them, not gulping it down. Sam sat down cross-legged on the ground. John sat next to Dean on a mossy boulder, putting down his rucksack next to Dean's on the shady side. "Sam, give us the rundown again on what happened the night Elizabeth vanished."

Sam opened the folder of research and began paging through it, head bent, bangs falling forward to shadow his face, and John's chest tightened. Kid looked all of eleven when he did that, and he almost wished Sam still was eleven, not this giant-sized, angry eighteen-year-old, this adult John barely knew.

"Mr. Henner didn't approve of Elizabeth's relationship with Kyle Bishop -- he had a rep in town, drove a motorcycle, drank a lot, had been arrested once. Shoplifting, I think. Elizabeth was supposed to go out with Kyle that night and Mr. Henner put his foot down through the floor, grounded her. They had a huge, screaming fight." Sam paused, eyes down on his notes. "The neighbors even called the police before things calmed down. Kyle, apparently, showed up an hour later to pick Elizabeth up on his motorcycle. Mr. Henner ran him off, yelling and threatening him, but he didn't have a weapon."

"And then later that night, he found Elizabeth's room empty?" Dean ducked his head forward and dribbled some canteen water on the back of his neck, then shook his head, sending water droplets flying.

"Climbed out her bedroom window, most likely. Ran off. Probably to meet that boyfriend of hers." John ran a hand over his face, feeling grimy, sticky with sweat, and already exhausted.

"Maybe this Kyle dude killed her," Dean said.

Sam shook his head, looking up at them. "He wasn't really that bad. He only got into trouble that one time and the aunt said he'd never done anything to hurt anybody." He looked down at his notes again. "After high school he opened a motorcycle dealership. Married, one kid. It's sad that he died, but it was just an ordinary car accident." Sam turned his head suddenly, peering off into the trees, and frowned.

"Yeah, because he was going eighty on a rainy night." Dean replaced the cap on his canteen.

"Elizabeth's aunt says he wasn't really the same after she vanished." Sam turned over another piece of paper. "Got quiet, withdrawn. She said all the fire went out of him."

A moment later, Dean's shoulders twitched. John saw the goose bumps go up on his son's arms, and then John felt something cold pass over them, as if an icebox door had been quickly opened and closed.

"The hell?" Dean slid off the boulder, body going into a ready stance.

"Elizabeth was angry when she died." John dropped to the ground next to Dean. "Makes for an angry ghost." He opened his bag and dug out an EMF meter while Dean got out the sawed-off shotgun. John switched on the meter and swept it back and forth. The meter squealed as he aimed at the boulder. A sharp tearing noise snapped through the air.

Sam scrambled to his feet, clutching his folder of research, and immediately moved over next to Dean.

John made another sweep with the meter, which stayed quiet. "It's gone now."

Dean picked up his rucksack, while Sam did the same. When John lifted his rucksack, it thudded to the ground, dangling from severed straps.

"Don't make 'em like they used to, right Dad?" But Dean didn't grin. The pack was close to eleven years old, and the straps had never shown any signs of fraying.

John knelt and fingered one of the broken straps. The tear wasn't clean, and frayed threads trailed from the break. It had been torn, and violently; there was no amount of patching that could make the strap reliably strong again.

"Great." Sam threw up his hands. "So this ghost is going to start a prank war on us? And here I forgot to pack the Nair."

John began removing his gear from the rucksack and handed some off to Dean, some to Sam, to put in their own bags. Then he tossed his bag off into the trees without bothering to watch where it landed, told himself he wouldn't miss the faded green rucksack at all. Not the bloodstain on the left side, Jim Murphy's blood, from when he'd saved Jim from a were attack. Not the peace-sign doodle in permanent marker Sam had drawn when he was nine. Not the patch Dean had sewn up for him when the threads at one corner had started to work loose.

He'd had a rucksack like that slung over one shoulder when he'd gotten home from Vietnam, Mary waiting for him when he'd stepped off the train.

Faded, bitter laughter whispered through the trees, so faint John would have thought he was imagining it, except for the way Sam and Dean startled.

No, he didn't believe in sixth senses or crap like that. But that pack had aged along with his boys, and losing it right now, this summer, when Sam was eighteen and slipping away...well, he took that as a bad sign.

* * *

Dean was sick and tired of the woods. Of the heat. Of the long silences followed by bickering. At least when Sam and Dad had been discussing the ghost, they had been talking like normal people. It was the most conversation they'd had in a week.

Worst of all, he was out of M&M's.

"I'm taking extra hours at the ice cream place." Sam glanced over at Dad as they walked.

And his little brother was a dumbass. Couldn't he ever just let it rest?

Dad continued on for several yards before answering, voice carefully measured. "Can you do that and help me and Dean hunting?"

"I'll fit it in."

"You're already there four nights as it is. You take more hours, you'll wear yourself out." Dad's index finger jabbed in Sam's direction. "I need you to be sharp."

"I can handle it."

"Gotta take a leak," Dean announced, and turned to step into the undergrowth. Dad and Sam stopped, waiting, but Dean waved them on. "I'll catch up."

"Make sure your shotgun's ready." Dad walked on.

Sam hesitated a moment, then did the same.

He really did have to take a piss, but also he needed to be alone, out of the pressure cooker. Sam had the worst timing known to humankind; Dean could have told him to tell Dad something like that after Dad had one or two cold beers inside him and was sitting back relaxed after a hot meal.

Not that Sam would listen to him anyway, for crying out loud.

Dean carefully placed the shotgun on the ground, unzipped, relieved himself, and was just zipping back up when he saw the pale girl watching him.

"Jesus Christ, give a guy some privacy, would you?"

Her body was washed out, transparent -- he could see the woods right through her. A tumble of long, curly hair that was probably brunette when it wasn't this weird, sepia tone, was pinned up, tendrils falling down over her shoulders. Her dress had a lot of ruffles around the chest, and she wore shoes with high, chunky heels. She looked like the first victim in a 70s horror flick, the one who died because she and her boyfriend were too busy making out to notice the crazed psycho creeping up behind them.

She moved towards him slowly, her feet making no sound on the leaves. Dean crouched and picked up the shotgun.

The expression on her face wasn't angry. She looked about ready to cry, a sad crease forming between her eyes. Her form flickered, and then she was right up in front of him, her hand reaching up to touch his face.

Dean jerked his head away, took a step back, and fired. Elizabeth Henner's ghost dispersed, the wisps of her scattering away.

He heard pounding feet as Sam and Dad ran back to him.

"Dean, what happened?" Few people would have heard the worry threaded beneath Dad's sharp demand.

"Damn ghost came right up to me. She didn't seem like she wanted to hurt me, though. She just..." Dean twitched his shoulders and lowered the gun. He didn't know what to say. The memory of the longing in her face was freaking him out. "I don't know. She walked up to me. She looked kinda sad."

Sam tilted his head. "She might have thought you were Kyle."

"Who?"

"Her boyfriend."

"Oh." Weirder and weirder. "Sooner we burn this chick's corpse, the better."

After another quarter of a mile, the ground grew rockier and started to slope downwards. They picked their way more slowly, Dad taking point. Dean kept his eyes on the woods that seemed to crowd in on them. The sun went behind a bank of clouds that had crept up out of nowhere, and the light dimmed.

Dad stumbled and went down like his legs had been kicked out from under him.

"Dad!"

He and Sam ran over and knelt as Dad sat up carefully. Dad brushed the grit off his hands, then rubbed his bare arm across his forehead, leaving a streak of dirt and sweat. It made him look younger.

"You hurt?" Dean asked, fingers searching the back of Dad's head, searching for blood or bumps.

"Nah. Holy crap" Dad winced. "I just..."

Dean had seen Dad go down on hunts, dropping like a rock on occasion. It was always the scariest thing Dean ever saw. But Dad didn't trip like that. Ever. He. Just. Didn't. "Sam, you feel anything before Dad fell?"

Sam's mouth opened slightly, and then he glanced at Dad before his eyes returned to Dean again. "Yeah. A split second before. Cold, going right by me."

"Shit, it was her again. Here, Dad, let's get you up." Dean took Dad's arm and hooked it across his shoulders.

"I'm fine, son," Dad said irritably. He started to his feet and yelped, sat back down fast.

"Where?" Dean ducked out from under Dad's arm.

"Left ankle," Dad said, teeth clenched.

Sam stayed at Dad's shoulder while Dean undid the laces on Dad's boot, then gently inched it off. Dad didn't make a sound as Dean gingerly prodded, then rotated his ankle, but when he glanced up, Dean saw how tight-lipped he was, paling beneath his tan.

"Looks like a sprain," Dean said.

"It's not a sprain. Just twisted it is all. I can walk," Dad said sharply as Sam reached for him.

"Least it's not broken," Dean said as Dad snatched the boot out of his hand.

Dad tugged his boot back on and tightened the laces, giving them a good sharp pull as if teaching the boot a lesson. He staggered to his feet and kept on going down the slope, limping badly.

"Dean..." Sam whispered.

Dean sighed and telegraphed Sam a look: _you want to tell him he shouldn't be walking?_ Then he left Sam standing there, frowning, and followed Dad down the slope.

The sun kept breaking free of the clouds, then going behind them again like a flickering lamp. He hurried to catch up with Dad, to walk beside him, to be a shoulder in case he needed the support, but he didn't offer outright because he knew it would be rejected.

* * *

The woods were menacing now. With the sunlight buried behind the thickening cloud cover, the vivid green luminescence had turned dull, washed out. Shadows were muted or nonexistent, but somehow the lack of them didn't comfort Sam. It was growing darker, and ghosts liked darker.

First the backpack, then Dad getting pushed; an idea tickled at the back of Sam's brain, mingled with the uneasy feeling he'd lived with all morning that they were being watched.

Sam stopped and shrugged the backpack from one shoulder, then pulled out the folder while Dean and Dad got farther and farther ahead. He let his backpack drop so he could hold the folder with both hands and page through it.

There they were: the printouts from microfiche, six obits. The deaths always happened in spring, summer, or early fall when hikers would be out in the woods. A pattern, and Sam had learned that ghosts liked patterns. They stuck to the same place, or fixated on a certain event or person or object. Some haunted annually, some were there all the time, festering and angry and indiscriminate about who they attacked. Some were more specific with their hatred.

Sam stared at the pictures of the six men who had died, bodies always found at the bottom of the ravine. The photos were old family pictures, all taken outdoors. Poorly focused or poorly reproduced in newsprint, but the general form of each man was clear: broad-shouldered, with dark hair and steady, challenging gaze for the camera. None of them were smiling; they just _were_ , looking almost too large for the borders of the photograph.

He pulled one more page out of the folder, a photograph of Elizabeth's father. Heavyset, broad-shouldered like the others, with thick black hair and a stare that spoke clearly of his unwillingness to put up with shit from anyone.

"Dad! Dean!" He snatched up his backpack and hurried down the slope, the folder in his free hand.

His brother and father stopped and turned in unison, faces twinning with a look of impatience.

"What is it, Sam?" It was the tone Dad had always used on him when Sam asked _are we there yet?_ one too many times.

"Elizabeth killed the hikers because they reminded her of her father."

Dad's eyes narrowed as he turned that over while Dean's eyebrows went up with a _yeah, and....?_ look.

"Look at the photographs of the hikers."

He thrust the papers at Dad, who shuffled through them. "Not sure I see your point, son." He handed the papers to Dean, who looked down. After the third page, he went still.

"I see it." He looked up and met Sam's eyes, then turned to Dad. "They're all your coloring and build and body type. The broken straps on your backpack? The way she shoved you down the slope? She's targeting _you_ , in particular. She's angry at you because she thinks..."

"She thinks Dad is Mr. Henner," Sam finished. "Her spirit's been out here all these decades, furious at him. Maybe wanting revenge because he killed her."

"Well, that's good deductive work, Sammy," Dad said. "Maybe it'll help, but it doesn't make much difference right now. One way or another we still have to find her remains."

"But Dad, if she's targeting you..."

"Sam!" It was a sharp bark of an order, an end to discussion. "We find her remains, we burn them," Dad added, each word clipped. "Rest of it doesn't matter."

Sam swallowed down the words that wanted to burst out of him: _You stubborn son of a bitch..._

God, couldn't Dad act at least a _little_ concerned for his own safety?

Then Dean caught his eye and his lips twitched in a quick, closed-mouth smile. It was acknowledgment and comfort. _I'm on it, Sam._

Ten minutes later, there was a long, wide gap in the trees ahead -- a swath where there simply wasn't any leaf canopy -- and the log railings of the fence marking the ravine appeared.

"Dean, you have the lighter fluid and the matches?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then let's do this."

"Uh, Dad?" Dean scratched the back of his head.

"What?"

"Just a suggestion..." Dean paused. "But with your ankle, maybe you shouldn't climb down."

Dad made a rude noise, something between a laugh and a grunt. "Don't be stupid. I told you, I just twisted it."

"Okay, then put all your weight on that foot," Sam challenged.

"Boys, drop it. Now."

"You can't, Dad --" Sam moved closer to Dad, knowing he shouldn't get into his space like that but needing Dad look at him, to hear him. "You know you can't. And if the ghost attacks us because she knows what we're trying to do, you need to be able to move fast. Isn't that what you've always told us, you have to be at your sharpest on a hunt? Check your ankle. It's probably swelling up."

Dad glared at him, and Sam glared right back, noting in a distant way that Dad had to glare _up_. He was also aware of Dean moving towards them, but there was no need. There was a first time for everything: Dad looked away first.

"Fine. Take your gear and you and Dean get your asses down there and back up fast."

Sam cleared his throat.

"What?" Dad's voice went past dangerous and into nuclear.

"I should stay with you, while Dean goes down. Or I go down and burn the corpse and Dean stays here. Either way, one of us should stay with you." Sam could almost feel his own heels digging into the dirt, preparing to withstand a gale-force resistance.

"All right," Dad said, and Sam wondered if he'd misheard. "Then let's stop standing around here with our thumbs up our asses, jawin' at each other. Dean? You go get this done."

Dean touched the box of matches to his forehead in salute, then briskly walked away, shotgun in one hand, bag holding the matches and lighter fluid in the other. He stopped occasionally to peer down into the ravine, looking for a place to climb down. Sam wanted to call after him to be careful, but knew it would be redundant. They all tried to be careful as much as possible.

Sam sat down on the ground to wait.

* * *

His ankle was throbbing like a bitch, but John would be damned if he'd sit down. He admitted that was part because he wanted to stay at the ready, and part because it would hurt too fucking much to put weight on it getting up again. So he grabbed hold of a nearby sapling.

Sam sat facing in the direction Dean had gone, leaning his arms on bent knees, his eyes on the ravine. He twirled a twig in his fingers, then tossed it away and picked up a leaf instead. Sam began to shred it, peeling away the green flesh until he had only the stalk left. He looked like Mary in a pensive mood.

The cloud cover thickened, and the day grew a few shades darker while the wind picked up. It would rain later, he could almost smell it. He itched to be moving, hated this, being protected, having to wait. He hated how Sam wouldn't even look at him, didn't even try to make small talk the way he used to. Hell, when Sam was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, he couldn't shut the boy up at times. Always asking questions about the Latin rituals, where John had found them, who used them, why holy water worked sometimes and salt other times, and could they order pizza for dinner. It wasn't because Sam was so into hunting that he asked the questions. Sam asked about all kinds of things.

He'd wanted to know about Vietnam, too, and John had told him because between the two worst times of his life, Vietnam was the only one he could talk about, barely. It hadn't been all bad. There'd been Deacon and the other guys in his unit. They'd made it bearable.

"So, these extra hours," John spoke, and was startled by how his voice seemed to crack into the quiet. "You think maybe you could charm them into giving you a day shift?"

"Yeah."

"Then I don't see why you can't do the job and the hunting."

His boy looked up at him, surprise in his eyes. "Really?"

"You've been working hard." John looked out across the ravine. "Didn't mean to ride you for working hard. It's good you're earning your own way."

Sam didn't answer. He tossed away the leaf and picked up a stick, began poking it into the dirt, and sniffed.

A movement flickered in the corner of John's eye and he straightened up, letting go of the sapling.

"Sam," he said, quiet, and Sam immediately untangled his legs, then reached into the gun bag for the Glock and the revolver, and handed the revolver to John.

The ghost of Elizabeth Henner stood a few yards away, watching them. A wind kicked up the leaves around the ghost's feet, but its hair and dress didn't stir at all. It stepped towards them, eyes burning hollow with hate and loss and other nameless things. John cocked the revolver, and fired. Elizabeth dispersed, then reappeared just beside Sam.

"Sam!"

His son immediately stepped back and John cocked and fired the gun again. The ghost winked out a fraction of a second too soon and suddenly it was there again, inches from John, its hands reaching out to him, face twisted with grief and rage.

John stepped back, cocked and aimed, but an invisible force shoved hard against his chest, stealing his breath. He fired, but the shot went wild.

"Why?" The spirit's voice was a deep well -- wet, dank and full of strange echoes.

Before Sam could fire again, Elizabeth's arm went out. John watched helplessly as Sam went flying, thudded back against a tree, and slumped to the ground. He lay as if folded in on himself, legs tucked beneath his body, arms limp, eyes closed.

"Sammy!" John started to hobble over to his son, ghost and ankle be damned, but she was in his face again, blocking his way. The wind was increasing. This close to the remains, with the cloud cover blocking the sun, Elizabeth's power had increased.

Sam's eyes opened. He groaned, then pushed himself up. The relief that shot through John was so great the world pitched and steadied.

"You shouldn't have yelled at me, Daddy," Elizabeth said, voice now whimpering and small.

"I'm not your father," John spoke without thinking, surprised that he felt the need to answer.

Elizabeth's ghost peered at his face for several seconds, and then her own crumpled with pain. "You never are. None of you ever are." A pause. Her head tilted to one side and her form flickered. "His fault."

"Why is it his fault?" Sam's hand closed over the gun, nestled among the leaves where he'd dropped it.

"He drove me away." Elizabeth turned to Sam.

The whole operation was about to become a clusterfuck, and his son was chatting with a hellforsaken ghost. Except whatever Sam was up to, it was working. The ghost was fully distracted. John aimed, ready to shoot, but Sam gestured at him to wait. John's finger nestled into the familiar spot against the trigger; he cocked the revolver but then met Sam's eyes, and against his own instincts, he stopped.

"Did your father kill you?" Sam asked, voice soft, wearing the look he often wore when they interviewed the families of the missing or dead.

"He..." Elizabeth put her hand to her forehead. "Yes. No." Her lower lip trembled. "No, no, he didn't but it was his fault. His fault I'm dead."

"Why is it his fault?"

"He yelled at me. Always held on too tight. Couldn't stand it anymore. So I climbed out my window."

"And you started walking?" Sam said. "You knew the fastest way to Kyle's house -- the only place you could think of to go -- was to cut through the woods. Halfway there, you got to the ravine."

"It was raining," she said, her voice becoming wistful for a second. "I found the bridge, but the ground was soft, I fell." The wind picked up again. "He hated me, and I'm dead because of him."

"No. He didn't hate you," Sam said, his voice still with that kind, quiet tone ( _so much like Mary..._ ). "He wanted to keep you safe."

The wind stopped and the entire world held its breath a moment. John felt a hum in the air all around them. He was just starting to marvel at the possibility that his boy had managed to reason with the unreasonable when the storm broke.

"It's his fault," Elizabeth said, and a blast of wind shook the leaves from the trees.

She put out her hands, shoved at thin air, and John wall of force slam against his chest again. His back hit the logs of the rough, weather-worn fence. Elizabeth kept her hands out while John tried to raise his gun, but he couldn't move his arm, couldn't step forward. His chest tightened.

He saw Sam lift his gun, heard the bang of the Glock as the world tumbled upside down, and then he felt himself falling.

* * *

About a quarter of a mile down from Sam and Dad the ravine grew shallower. Boulders and the trunks of dead trees made something like a staircase to the bottom. Convenient.

Dean put the shotgun in the bag with the stock jutting out, because he couldn't carry the gun while he was climbing, but he sure as hell wanted to be able to grab it in a hurry.

Dean climbed over the fence.

The ravine smelled of mud and wet stone. It reminded him of crypts. Appropriate; after all, the place was pretty much a tomb. Dean grabbed a dead tree with one hand, picking his way with his boots down to the next boulder. His foot slipped. He swore and caught himself.

Because wouldn't that be just perfect, for him to fucking fall and break a fucking leg.

He'd always been a good climber; seemed like he and Sam had spent half their childhood climbing all kinds of ordinary things like trees and jungle gyms and other things they had no business climbing, like small bridges and abandoned buildings. Dad didn't know about that, but he seemed pleased enough that they could climb well. It was one of a long list of skills Dad thought they should have, falling somewhere below being able to start a fire without matches.

The leaves high overhead began to rustle.

Something was happening.

He began to climb down faster, taking less care where he put his feet, and made it to the bottom in one piece. The bottom of the ravine was a tangle of dead leaves, rotting logs, boulders and discarded beer bottles. Seemed like folks had decided to use the place as an unofficial dump. Body could be anywhere in that mess.

Dean poked around with the toe of his boot, hoping to hear the crunch of old bones.

His stomach twitched and Dean put his palm against his belly, under his T-shirt. Sam and Dad could handle one little ghost, if it materialized again.

Screw it. So what if they were arguing when he climbed back out. He wasn't some freakin' babysitter. Sometimes he felt like he was the only grown-up in the family, the way Sam and Dad had been at each other's throats lately. Worse than ever this summer.

Beyond the summer, when there was no more bickering because Sam wasn't there to argue with Dad anymore...when Sam wasn't there...Dean's mind ran up to the edge of that cliff and stopped.

Do the job.

Dean kicked over a rock, watched as bugs skittered away. He jumped back. Not that he was scared of bugs, or anything like that.

He made his way between two large boulders, bracing his free hand against the cool, mossy surface of the taller one, and hopped down on the other side.

That's when he saw it -- a shoe with a familiar shape to the heel. Dean crouched and began pulling away the layers of leaves and dirt. A piece of cloth appeared by his left foot. It was filmy and might have been purple once. He got the small hand shovel out of his bag and began to dig through the decades of woodsy debris that had settled over the body.

When it was exposed, a sting of unexpected pity shot through him.

Girl like that shouldn't be nothing but a pile of bones in a gorge. Girl like that should be on the back of a guy's motorcycle, wind tugging her skirt back while she put her head back and laughed.

Dean sprinkled salt over her. Then he cleared a space around her, using his hands to dig down to the soft undersoil, so the corpse would burn without taking the ravine with it. He took out the lighter fluid and doused the bones

The match was in his hand, poised to strike against the side of the box, when the woods above him went apeshit. Leaves swirled up around his feet while an unnatural wind made the trees above him creak back and forth.

Something was happening all right. Shit. He'd been right to be uneasy.

His brother's shout was distant, swallowed by wind: _Dean, hurry!_

Fingers clenched so hard his knuckles went white, Dean struck the match and dropped it. The remains of Elizabeth Henner began to burn.

Then Dean grabbed his backpack and began to run.

* * *

The wind kicked up grit and dirt to sting his face as Sam dropped hard to the ground by the fence, his hand still clenched tight around the Glock. He looked down into the ravine. At first he only saw the tangle of vines and boulders and trash, not what he was afraid to see. But it wasn't until he heard the steady string of curses coming from Dad that Sam turned and spotted him.

Dad was clinging to the ravine wall, with the toes of his boots dug into the loose dirt, his fingers wrapped around a thick, sturdy section of exposed root.

Sam's shoulders slumped and he felt his legs and arms go weak. He let himself sag, still peering over the edge and before he could help it, started laughing softly in relief.

"Oh, yeah, this is real funny," Dad stopped cursing long enough to say.

Sam took a deep, shaky breath. He'd need both hands to pull Dad back up, so he set the Glock down, hooked his arms under his father's armpits, and pulled with all his strength. Dad pushed hard with his feet against the ravine wall, grunting, the muscles of his arms straining.

A blast of cold ruffled Sam's hair and then there were pale, transparent fingers against his bare lower arm, sharp, icy and painful. It felt like icicles jabbing into his skin. He clenched his teeth and hissed against the pain.

"Sam, let go of me and grab the gun. Sam! Now!"

Years of long habit kicked in and he tried to obey. But he couldn't move his arm, not with Elizabeth Henner's ghost right on top of him. She held her other hand out to Dad, who had his arms now hooked around the middle log of the fence.

Sam saw his father's face harden as he struggled against Elizabeth, knotting his fingers together to keep his arms hooked around the log, his body still dangling into the ravine. The wind was still rising, making it hard to see because of all the debris swirling in the air. It was hard to hear anything except the rush of wind through the trees, the creaking of branches.

"No!" Sam shouted down into the ravine, "Dean! Hurry," tried to wrench his arm towards the Glock and failed miserably. A thought buzzed through his head like an angry fly: _Dean would be able to do this._

There was no way in hell he was going to let Dad fall. Sam's fingers closed around the grip of the gun, and it felt like his arm was being torn to shreds.

Before he could fire, Elizabeth suddenly backed away from them with a cry.

With his arm freed, Sam let go of the gun and grabbed Dad's arm while flickers of red and orange licked at Elizabeth's feet and then crept slowly up her body, consuming the skirt of her dress. Her whole body went up in flames, the light a mix of bright white-hot and furious orange. Then she was gone, spark-like remnants of her fading like embers, the last of her scream echoing through the woods.

Sam sagged with relief and closed his eyes a moment, trying to catch his breath. Another curse from Dad dragged his attention back, and he helped his father over the fence. Once on the other side, Dad staggered and yelped as his bad foot came down. He leaned against the fence and sank to the ground.

Sam sat next to him, Glock held loose between his knees. He let out a puff of air to get his hair, tangled with twigs and bits of leaves, out of his eyes. The sky lightened a few degrees.

Dad exhaled, long and slow. "Nice work, son."

But it was Dean who'd found the body and burned it; that's what had saved them. "For what?"

"For holding on so tight." A wry smile ghosted across his father's face and vanished.

They sat there, their shoulders nearly touching.

He could say it, right now: _Dad, I'm leaving for Stanford in the fall. They've given me a full-ride scholarship. Isn't that cool?_

Maybe Dad would smile, maybe he'd be proud. But the words tangled in Sam's throat and couldn't escape.

When Dean appeared, running towards them, they were still sitting side by side in silence.

"You guys okay?" Dean knelt and his eyes flickered over both of them, quick and frantic.

"Yeah," Dad said, but his voice was flat and he didn't look at Sam. "We're good."

It took them longer to walk back out to the car than it had taken to go in. After a mile or so, a firm hand came down on Sam's shoulder and his steps faltered in surprise.

Dad leaned on him the rest of the way out of the woods.

~end

*the phrasing on the scrap of paper John found is taken from the Fall 2007 Stanford application


End file.
